The legislation will be sent to the relevant session committee for consideration, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga told lawmakers today in a televised debate from the capital, Kampala.

Uganda’s parliament voted to reopen a debate on a bill that seeks to outlaw homosexuality that may be expanded to include the death penalty for gay people.

Giles Muhame, the former editor of the notorious Ugandan gay-baiting tabloid Rolling Stone (no relation to the U.S. publication by the same name) has more about the Parliamentary maneuvers and debates which, he says, brought the bill back. According to Muhame, the motion to revive the bill was made by MP Lt. Col. Sara Mpabwa, and was seconded by MP Crispus Ayena. A host of other contentious bills which were left unfinished when the Eighth Parliament expired last May were also reportedly brought back, along with all committee reports attached to the bills. Speaker Kadaga cited parliamentary procedures in Canada and India to justify the procedure of bringing bills back into Parliament without repeating the initial readings required to introduce a bill and refer it to committee.

If these reports are correct, then the bill’s revival appears to be occurring despite assurances from representatives of President Yoweri Museveni’s cabinet that they have “thrown out” the bill. When that annnouncement was made last August, a Parliamentary spokesperson immediately shot back that the bill was “Parliament’s property.” Meanwhile, M.P. David Bahati, the bill’s sponsor, was elevated to the vice-chairmanship of the ruling party’s caucus in Parliament. In October, the caucus chairman was forced to step aside due to a corruption probe, and Bahati has since been elevated to acting caucus chair.

Since the innauguration of the Nineth Parliament, there had been rumors that that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill would be brought back sometime in the second half of August while others placed the timing in November. It was unclear what form the reintroduced bill would take. In early 2010, the Cabinet had recommended dismantling the bill and passing portions of it surreptitiously as amendments to other bills in the hopes of escaping worldwide attention. Many of those reported recommendations actaully made their way into a Parliamentary report last May, barely a week before the Eight Parliament was scheduled to end. Media at that time carried several false reports that the death penalty provisions had been dropped, but we now know that the death penalty, in fact, was still part of the bill. The Parliamentary Affairs Committee recommended that in the Clause 3 defining “aggravated homosexuality” and which specifies that “A person who commits the offence of aggravated homosexuality shall be liable on conviction to suffer death,” that the phrase “suffer death” should be replaced with “the penalty provided for aggravated defilement under Section 129 of the Penal Code Act.” Section 129 of the Penal Code Act mandates the death penalty for an unrelated offense of child molestation. Parliament ultimately failed to pass the bill due to a lack of a quorum because of controversy over another unrelated bill.

If, as reported, this latest maneuver actually does revive the bill with its Parliamentary Affairs Committee report, then the bill’s passage might be imminent since the last step for its final passage last May was a final vote in Parliament.

In this original BTB Investigation, we unveil the tragic story of Kirk Murphy, a four-year-old boy who was treated for “cross-gender disturbance” in 1970 by a young grad student by the name of George Rekers. This story is a stark reminder that there are severe and damaging consequences when therapists try to ensure that boys will be boys.

When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.